Forced to re-new membership through Developer app

[u/Recent-Huckleberry17]

I'm surre I had auto-renewal turned on for my apple developer membership since I've ben atuomatically charged since 5 years. This year, I got a pop-up saying my membership is about to expire and to make sure it's on auto-renewal. I followed the link to my profile, it said "renews on ... " but that pop-up still remained whenever I opened App store connect. When the day of renewal came, I was informed that my membership expired and to download the app to renew my subscription. Online it said I could renew it in browser too, but I didn't see the option. However, neither did I see the option when I downloaded the app. I reached out to Apple and within 3 days they let me know to check the app again and that the option to renew should re-appear and my apps would become available again on the App store. I did that and it was true.

However, now I am subscribed through the Apple subscription option on their app. Given what happened with app revenue for Apple dropping drastically this year because the stripe interface for payments is now allowed to be interateg more smoothly into apps interfaces, made me wonder if Apple is somehow trying to compensate for the losses in app revenue by moving Apple developer payments through their app system?

Given it's a public company and a bigger drop in app revenue may impact their stock price, do they try to mitigate that?